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The European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) advances treatment, care and research of gynaecological cancers and offers members and non-members a variety of ways to advance their professional development.
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Message from ESGO President

Message from ESGO President

The Vision for ESGO in an ever-changing world

It is a great honor and pleasure for me to address you as the new president of the ESGO.

At the beginning of a two-year term, I would like to share with you my vision for the next two years for our society.

The ESGO has many strengths, that can be summarized in four key adjectives: successful, growing, dynamic, friendly.

The most recent evidence supporting this statement was the Vienna meeting, with 3218 participants from 97 countries, a perfect scientific structure designed by the scientific committee, and outstanding local organization.

Apart from biennial meetings, the ESGO is visible through the support of local meetings, the masterclasses and advanced courses, the State of the Art Conference, the guidelines for clinical practice, the activities and publications of the task forces, and the web-based educational platform called ESGOeAcademy.

These represent the complete set of ways by which our members can continuously remain as close as possible to the latest advances in our sub-specialty.

Our younger colleagues successfully run their group, the ENYGO, which is the "fishing pond" of the continuing success of the ESGO in the future.

The patients, who are the ultimate subjects, are involved via our ENGAGe patients advocacy groups network. They also benefit from clinical research via the ENGOT network, which is positioned in the global competition for relevant clinical trials.

All these activities could not be managed without a clear leadership, a dedicated Council, and an efficient administrative office.

Over the last two years, David Cibula has structured the preparation of the biennial congress and state of the art meetings, led a bid for the new PCO and facilitated the expansion of the ESGO office.

David Cibula has also made the right decisions allowing to overhaul the ENGAGe network, and introduced many new ideas, from the ESGO run to guidelines smartphone apps.

The Council is not a typical political body, with power and narcissism issues. It is a friendly, gender-balanced, group of leaders from various countries and complementary backgrounds, genuinely committed to making the ESGO successful.

The small but efficient and enthusiastic team is a fantastic asset. The responsible budget management makes us financially healthy, to the point where we can now think of reasonably investing in new activities.

The conditions are ideal to be optimistic for the future of the ESGO, and at the same time make the position of the new President even more challenging.

We must maintain the achievements, preserve the efficient working atmosphere, and constantly strive to move forward and adapt to the evolution of our world.

In a nutshell, we must define our ambitions, and work hard to live up to them.

Let's start with a few simple statements:

Nothing holds forever, and nothing is perfect.

The first goal is to further improve our educational products (including teaching sessions in meetings, ESGO eAcademy, e-textbook, masterclasses, and workshops), and to adapt and update the ESGO guidelines, with the target of releasing regular updates at the time of the biennial meeting.

Gynaecological oncology is a sub-specialty that has not reached its maturity universally; in many countries, there is no sub-specialty training yet; even in countries with a recognized sub-specialty, many patients are still managed by inexperienced teams.

The second goal is to define a core corpus of knowledge and to make sure that physicians will manage their patients with sufficient expertise and skills. To achieve this goal, we will develop a certification system adapted to all situations in the European context, as well as refine and build our certification and quality assurance program for teaching and surgery.

Geographical Europe, from Armenia to Iceland, from the Canary Islands to Russia, from Turkey to Norway, is quite diverse with countries and areas that are medical, economically, and culturally different.

However, all these countries are of interest to us. The third goal is our commitment to adapt our messages and actions as well as to foster the development of localized meetings at the periphery of our shared home.

Medical English is our lingua franca, but many of our colleagues are more comfortable with their native language, and patients do not have the background to understand our technical words.

The fourth goal is then to foster the communication with colleagues and patients by translating our guidelines in lay language accessible to patients, and in several medical European languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, French, and others.

This world is ever-changing.

The most prominent features of the evolution are the development of communication media, the expressed need of a feedback between deciders and users, the rise of the young generations.

As we have always done, we are awaiting for the feedback of the participants to the biennial meeting, and we will take it into account to further improve and adapt to meet the current and future needs of professionals- our fifth goal.

ESGO is developing the Guidelines App for smartphones to make the guidelines useful in day-to-day practice. The update of the guidelines will take into account the shared comments of the App users.

The input of the young gynecologic oncologists of the ENYGO group will be even more favored, with the objective of developing innovative ideas that will shape a different future.

There is a demand for concrete actions, and ESGO's sixth goal is to continue its policy to deliver and enhance particular products that will improve the quality of care for women with gynaecological cancers in the "real world".

As a concrete action, an almost complete set of guidelines for clinical practice, including rare tumors, will be presented at the State of the Art Conference in Lyon, Franceֲ this October and finalized by the end of the next two years.

Last but not least, I wholeheartedly wish the best to all the members of the ESGO family, their loved ones, and patients.